The college teachers would soon get interim relief in the form of merger of 50 per cent of dearness allowance in the basic salary. A decision to this effect was taken at a high level meeting convened by Minister for Higher Education D H Shankaramurthy and attended among others by legislators, officials and representatives of Federation of University and College Teachers’ Associations in Karnataka (FUCTAK).
Federation President A M Narahari and General Secretary Dr B S Makal said the education department has given its approval for the merger of 50 per cent of DA in their basic and the necessary order will be issued in this regard after gathering information from various states. It has also been decided to accommodate 600 teachers in degree colleges.
They had been teaching in pre-university section of the composite degree colleges and withdrawn from PU teaching after separation of PU from the composite degree colleges in the year 2001.
If the vacancies are not available in the original colleges they will be posted to aided or government colleges on lean.
The minister has instructed education commissioner to complete the process in a month’s time.
The proposal for extending UGH payscales to teachers working on stop gap arrangement would be discussed with the officials of law department and proposal in this regard will be taken to the cabinet for its approval. The issue of part time lecturers was before the court and efforts will be made to take a final decision in the matter.
The high level meeting also decided to consider the remaining 12 demands of FUCTAK to take a suitable decision.
At the meeting the Federation opposed to the proposal of holding state level common admission test for admission of students to post graduate courses in all the universities of the state.
It wanted the government to  increase the number of PG seats as per the requirement and continue the present system of university wise admission to PG courses.
Opposition leader in the State Legislative Council H K Patil, MLCs Puttanna, Shashil Namoshi, Srikanthegowda and Narayanaswamy attended the meeting.